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Rowan came down with the flu on Friday and, like any diligent parent would, I rushed Emma and John off on Saturday morning to see Zootopia 2 before either of them fell ill. Just as well, too, because John started to develop symptoms by Saturday evening. We probably could have gone next week but I was worried that it might have become all but impractical to see it in English if we waited too long.
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I thought the movie itself was amazing. This is easily the best Disney film since Encanto and, if I were to extend it beyond that, I’d have to go back to the original Zootopia in 2016 (and I think Zootopia 2 might be better). It was everything I wished Frozen 2 had been: a reprisal of the original that developed the relationship at the core (in that case, Anna and Elsa; in this case, Judy and Nick).
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I realised on Sunday that, in an ordinary year, we would have been in Australia for Christmas by that point. I’m sad we couldn’t go back this year but it’s probably good for the kids not to always think of ‘holiday’ as a verb.
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As is no doubt evident with these belated weeknotes (I back date them but avid readers know they’ve almost a week late each time), I’ve been spending an increasing amount of my free time working on programming projects. That hasn’t just impacted these updates but the amount of time I’ve been spending on my phone generally. On Thursday that resulted in me completely neglecting to log an entry in Reporter. I didn’t export its data to double check but I think that might have been the first time I’ve missed a day in more than 10 years. It was also a reminder that I really need to get around to writing my own replacement. The app hasn’t seen an update in six years and I worry that at some point it simply won’t open.
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Speaking of which, this week I worked on another of those ‘forever projects’ that I never seem to get around to doing. In this case, it was Kris. Kris is really a wrapper around the Zig toolchain that uses it to cross-compile programs written in the Janet programming language. Honestly, it’s not that much of an achievement but I was glad to tick it off the list.
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Last week I mentioned I’d signed up for Nebula. As I suspect, I find the video player frustrating enough that I keep launching YouTube instead. The one creator I have been watching has been Lindsay Ellis. Her essay from 2023 on Jurassic Park (paywalled) was a reminder of how masterful she is at exploring a piece of media, both on its own terms and in the broader historical context in which it took place. If there is someone who will keep me subscribed, it’ll be her.
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The aforementioned Kris is, of course, a reference to the pioneering rap duo, Kris Kross. I know them from their ubiquitous hit ‘Jump’ (Apple Music) but Wikipedia does have a more fulsome history. I was listening to ‘Jump’ again and found myself legitimately impressed with the boys’ flow. I’d mentally catalogued it as one of those early ‘90s rap hits (‘Ice Ice Baby’, ‘U Can’t Touch This’, ‘Boom! Shake the Room’) which succeeded more as novelty records than anything else. I’m hardly an authority on hip-hop but to the extent I have any standing to opine, this is legitimately good rapping.
